Invoking Venus

For those of you who came to see the images; skip over this long description. The information given in this description, however, is very interesting...
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An exhibition of photo-based images by Catherine Stewart and accessories from the clothing collections of Claus Jahnke and Ivan Sayers. Using bird specimens from the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Vancouver-based Stewart explores the role colour, patterning and adornment play in courtship and attraction. Through the juxtaposition of images of bird plumage with images of vintage fabrics and actual feathered fashion accessories, the parallels in human and bird behaviour become apparent. The lush and sensuous images magnify details in avian plumage and vintage fabrics, revealing a multitude of rich and varied hues that combine to create the colours, textures and patterns observed when viewing birds and humans at their finest.

Recap: OPENING NIGHT OF FASHION SHOW (photographs displayed in this gallery)

A Passion for Plumage: A History of Feathers in Fashion
On February 7, 2013, the opening event for this fascinating exhibition began with a fashion show featuring historical clothing and accessories from the collections of Ivan Sayers and Claus Jahnke. As models walked down the red carpet for over 100 guests, our host Ivan Sayers covered over a century of fashion with note of the changing attitudes towards the use of feathers and other animal products in the ornamentation of women's clothes and the social history around the fashion of the times. For highlights of the fashion show, check out our Flickr page or YouTube Channel.

INVOKING VENUS, Feathers and Fashion opened at the beginning of February, and we would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our community partners sponsors that have helped make this exhibition possible.

About the exhibit: INVOKING VENUS, Feathers and Fashion presents photo-based images by Catherine Stewart and accessories from the clothing collections of Claus Jahnke and Ivan Sayers. Using bird specimens from the Beaty Biodiversity Museum, Vancouver-based Stewart explores the role colour, patterning and adornment play in courtship and attraction. We reached out to the local community to help us put on this exhibition, and the Society for the Museum of Original Costume (SMOC) answered our call.

We are so pleased to count SMOC as a silver sponsor. With funding graciously provided by Dr. Yosef Wosk, SMOC is able to promote and bring one of the artists, Ivan Sayers to host three exhibition talks on various fashion-related topics:

BIOGRAPHIES
Catherine M. Stewart
Originally from Windsor, Ontario, Catherine Mary Stewart has lived and worked as an artist in Vancouver for many years. She earned a BSc from the University of Toronto and a MFA from the University of British Columbia. Her artistic investigations, particularly of the past dozen years, relate visually and philosophically to the practices, aesthetics and history of science. Her work has won awards and been shown locally, nationally and internationally in group and solo exhibitions. Venues for solo exhibitions include the Isaac Newton Institute for Mathematical Sciences (2002) and the Glasgow Science Centre (2004). The Colour of Courtship series was shown at Murray Edwards College, University of Cambridge, UK in conjunction with the Darwin Festival (2009). Ms. Stewart’s media of choice are photography and printmaking with a special interest in photo-etching which she has taught at Malaspina Printmakers in Vancouver and at print studios abroad. More about the artist and her work can be found at http://www.catherinestewart.net.

Ivan Sayers
Ivan Sayers was born in Cornwall, Ontario and moved to British Columbia at the age of two. He graduated in 1969 from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Classical Studies and in 1970 began his museum career as a volunteer at the Museum of Vancouver where he eventually served as Curator of History from 1976 to 1990. Mr. Sayers has collected costume since he was a teenager and now has one of the finest privately owned collections of period clothing in Canada with men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing and accessories dating from c.1690 to the present. He has been producing lectures, exhibitions, and fashion shows on historic fashion and social history for over forty years and is a regular lecturer at most of the local universities and colleges. He has received awards from the British Columbia Fashion Designers Association and was given a distinguished service award by the British Columbia Museum Association in October, 2010.

Claus Jahnke
Claus Jahnke was born in Edmonton, Alberta and brought up in the Okanagan Valley of BC. He studied fashion merchandizing in Vancouver, graduating in 1982. He has collected historic clothing since he was a very young man, specializing in fashionable, occupational and recreational costume made in Germany and Austria from 1732 to the 1960’s. Items from his collection have been shown at various museums, including the Museum of Vancouver, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York. His most important exhibition to date, hosted by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, was called “Broken Threads” and illustrated the destruction of the Jewish garment industry in Germany and Austria under fascism. Mr. Jahnke and his work were recently the subject of a photograph by the well known Canadian artist, Jeff Wall.
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The above plagiarized gallery description is a compilation of eloquently formulated write-ups taken from various websites. I am indebted to all of the writers, whom ever you are individually. To figure out where each piece came from, just Google it.